I am in the process of moving this site to a new server. Hopefully I will survive!

There's been a post on the blog every day for years. Today will be no exception though not much has happened. Pajamas all day for Helaine and me. Most of my day was at the keyboard doing a small web design project I've undertaken. The finished product will be used, but it's more for my training and discovery than anything else.

While the child slogs through the California rainy season, Connecticut finally popped into spring tease season. I'm only saying that because winter will surely reappear--if only briefly.

Holy crap! Every year I'm amazed by the number of branches and limbs that crash to the yard each winter.

We did one really good thing today. We barbecued! Helaine was the chef. My job was to rehook the propane tank to the grill. I can't tell you why but they spent the winter unhooked.

Over the years we've amassed a few propane bottles, so I hoisted the heaviest one and tried to attach it. It wouldn't. After about five minutes I realized it had interior threads while the grill is looking for exterior threads.

How the heck did that happen? Where did it come from? What do I do with it?

In the end little of my tumult mattered because it's faux spring.

The sky was blue. The burgers were superb.

The child is working in West Hollywood today. She is a production assistant on a pilot for a new cable reality show. It's a few days work--a very good start.

Helaine and I are proud. She's undoubtedly exhausted! Her call was 7:30 am. The talent's call was 3:00 pm.

Production assistant means you're a jack-of-all-trades. It's what you do to see what you want to do next.

Part of Stef's day was spent driving to Ikea in Burbank to pick up some set pieces. On her way she drove by Hollywood and Highland, site of this weekend's Oscar telecast.

You just don't get these photo ops in Hamden!

I can't tell you the last time I saw Playboy¹. A bill came from them today anyway! Unbeknown to me someone put my name on a subscription form. There's a website for problems like mine. In two sentences I explained my situation.

"We have received your email inquiry and it is being sent to a Customer Service Representative; please do not reply to this message. We respond to all email inquiries in the order in which they are received. We value our customers and promise you a prompt reply. Thank you for contacting Playboy."

Playboy. I think back to Barbie Benton. She's six months older than me. Probably a grandmother now. That fantasy's been derailed.

Through my daughter I know Hefner and concubines have been on cable for a few seasons. Viagara notwithstanding, does anyone really think these girls desire Hef and, quite honestly, vice versa?

I don't have Hef's money but to women of playmate age I am transparent! This is not a recent occurrence.

One of these women married Hank Baskett the former Philadelphia Eagle who fumbled the ball during this year's Super Bowl. That makes sense. Hef, not so much.

The real reason I'm writing this is I'm surprised Playboy still exists at all. Times are tough for print and even tougher for porn²! Who exactly is buying this?

With naked pictures taken with cellphone cameras held at the end of outstretched arms, the advent of 'sexting'³ and an Internet full of flesh what place does Playboy still hold? What part of the market is still available to them?

Playboy was readily available because it was considered 'classy.' With the Internet isn't even the pretense of classy now unnecessary?

I have two business days to think about all this.

¹ - That could be said even if Helaine wasn't reading this.

² - OK, it's not porn, but it's certainly in competition with porn.

³ - Secondhand knowledge. Honest.

There was a mix up at the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services concerning an account I'd had. No problem they have an office I pass on my way to work.

I pulled into the lot, saw the sign and looked around. I'd been here before (same problem), but couldn't seem to find the office.

That's because they're no longer here! Only the sign remains.

I solved the problem on the phone.

It's been like performing dentistry on myself! The goal was to make my life simpler by developing the new look for my website on a server installed on my desktop PC then move it to a commercial server when finished. Maybe it will be easier. It hasn't been so far!

When I went to move it off the desktop machine to its final resting place the site responded with an error message. Later it was the "white screen of death." Finally I could see the home page but all links, even links to log in, were dead!

These are the times that try men's souls. I had achieved Helaine's oft spoken fear when I delve too deeply. I'd fixed it to the point of breaking it!

In an earlier entry the subject of the "Wordpress Community" came up. Wordpress is the platform on which the new site will be built. The community was there for me tonight, though not in the flesh. There is a treasure trove of archived forum posts online.

If something can be broken it already has been! I was able to go to school on other poor schlubs.

I wrote what you just read around 3:30 am. Before I could start patting myself on the back things broke so badly I had to stop writing. I didn't get to bed until nearly 6:00 am.

It's now after 1:00 pm. Where were we?

The deeper I got into the site the more wasn't working and I was finding stuff broken no one had found before! It's not supposed to be like this.

I started deleting plug-ins, which add functionality. That's the typical response to this kind of problem and it usually works. Not here.

I will spare you my tooth gnashing. The problem seems to be a version of php, a programming language critical to blogging (and other dynamic sites). The blog was built with php5, the current version. My web host offers php5, but defaults to php4. They are not the same--think Latin and Pig Latin.

Worse still, when I finally found and put in the fix (the line "AddType x-mapp-php5 .php" was inserted in a hidden file called .htaccess) I left out the space between php5 and .php! Now the site was so dead I couldn't even get to the administration screens!

It's all fixed now and the site is up, but hidden in plain site at a different web address for the time being. There are still cosmetic fixes that need to be made. Sometimes text gets larger and smaller for no apparent reason. Mostly though I accomplished what I set out to do and I hardly pulled out any hair.

The new look debuts this weekend--maybe.

I got an instant message earlier this evening. It was Helaine. The message was just a link, nothing more. I clicked and saw:

It was the Florida State Seminoles site. They played the Phils tonight. Helaine was looking to listen.

The isn't preseason baseball. It's pre-preseason baseball! No one's playing with a jersey number lower than 85.

And you wonder why I love her so?

I used this as an excuse to buy the yearly Major League Baseball video package. We get it every year and it is well used!

It's a great idea, but talk about a purchase limited by small print! If anyone's game is nationally telecast the Phillies game is blacked out. If the Phils are playing in New York or Boston the game is blacked out (though we do get those games on cable).

There has been some kvetching recently from folks who are blacked out though they're hundreds of miles from the nearest team and on-air or cable telecasts aren't available. That's just wrong.

I scrolled down the MLB.TV page looking for dirty tricks. Sure enough well below 'the fold' there was a pre-checked space expressing my desire to automatically renew next March 1. I unchecked it, as I had last year. Persistent bastards, aren't they?

I love baseball. It means spring is right around the corner.

As a geek these are exciting times. Smart phones like the iPhone, Androids and Microsoft's still-to-be-seen efforts are putting major computing in your pocket. They're powerful enough that I've sometimes been guilty of disregarding my dinner companions as I work the phone (actually everything but the phone).

Of course nothing like this happens in a vacuum. Everyone tries to protect their territory. There's so much my iPhone can do, if only Steve Jobs would say yes!

Seriously, my phone is purposely crippled in many ways.

An example is the Dragon Dictation app. It does an amazing job of translating spoken words to text. Unfortunately Apple says it can't speak directly to the email or SMS programs. In order to use DD you have to cut and paste.

Though approved by Apple this applet is hidden from the iPhone's most powerful features. It's not that the software can't perform this task, it's been prohibited from performing it!

By keeping programs like Dragon Dictation separated from other functions Apple has made a powerful feature nearly worthless. I love the app. I never use it!

This is totally Apple's choice. They could let it happen tomorrow and I'm sure Dragon would have the updated software waiting.

This is just one in a series of arbitrary or puzzling decisions.

Some friends say I should just 'jailbreak' the phone--remove Apple's grip with a simple unauthorized software download. Good idea, though jailbreaking alone will not make this particular software work as it should.

Maybe I own the iPhone, but only under a strict license which says what I can and can't do, what I can and can't load into it. It's as if your Ford was only allowed to use Ford gasoline and could only be repaired with Ford parts. Maybe you should only be able to chill GE water in your GE refrigerator.

Don't get me wrong, this phone is killer. I love it. I am frustrated though because I can see what is being done to keep Apple as gatekeeper.

Now Apple is reaching out to keep competitors from competing. Yesterday they sued HTC, who makes smartphones under their own name and for others. This has to do with HTC's phone that use Google's Android operating system.

Apple is enforcing its software patents. That itself is pretty controversial as software patents are a recent 'innovation' seemingly granted broadly and with little scrutiny. A software patent case is on its way to the Supreme Court right now.

Though companies with these patents say they are (and probably are) just protecting their investments in research and development, others say patents on software limit innovation.

It's interesting to hear organizations perceived as liberal, like the Electronic Freedom Foundation use concepts normally reserved for the right.

None of this seems to be happening for our (my) benefit.

Back in the good old days computing and the Internet were filled with hackers. These weren't the nefarious steal your bank account hackers of the 21^st Century but more like computing McGyvers.

Mostly guys, they liked what they were doing and wanted to share. While at Emerson College in the late 60s I'd often go to MIT and hang out with them. Socially awkward in most cases, they had plenty of time to hack.

The Internet is different today. Computing is different too. I am the rare exception, someone who still builds his own machines--a chore which surely costs more than buying one in a store. To most people a computer is another appliance and they'd no sooner build their own than they'd build their toaster.

Hackers are still around. We're more hidden now. Names that impress you, like Microsoft or McAfee, leave us cold. Real hackers play with FOSS--Free and Open Source Software.

If you use Firefox and you click deep enough within the menus you'll finally come to a spot where it's revealed, "All of the source code to this product is available under licenses which are both free and open source." Hell yeah it is.

The same freeware philosophy drives Linux and Apache and MySQL. Those three names might not mean much to you, but the Internet is firmly built on them much to Microsoft's chagrin.

My still-in-design blog is also FOSS. It's built on Wordpress which carries a GNU General Public License.

The hackers are alive and well and supporting Wordpress!

Though well documented (and I actually do read the docs) yesterday I ran into a Wordpress dead end I couldn't back out from. There is no help desk to call. My tech support was the Wordpress community.

Early this afternoon I shot off a very technical question full of cryptic source code. It concluded, "Can someone give me a hand, please?"

Within ten minutes there was a first response--a request for more info. The conversation went back-and-forth as I better explained the situation. Sometimes the afflicted don't know enough to even ask the right question! That was me.

"If you can post your complete code (from whichever file you're doing this in), I'll show you where to make changes." A stranger was offering assistance.

I did. He did. The fix worked perfectly! And not only does it work, the fix is well documented so I can learn from it and replicate it later if I need to.

I don't really know who "t31os_" is or where he's located. He felt my pain. He coded the fix.

This is the spirit of hacking. This is what continues to fuel my deep affection for computing.

What "t31os_" is for me I am for others. I've done surgery for friends dozens of times making their dead PCs once again reach out for the viruses and porn that got them into trouble in the first place!

If you read the geek websites you'll see ominous hints that some companies want to throttle FOSS and hackers. We are a threat to their existence, or at least their current profit margin.

In the meantime we're driven to hack and unlikely to stop.

Stefanie had an interview in Burbank at 10:00 AM today. I assume she got there early because by 10:01 she was on the phone--employed! Actually we were worried about her getting there at all since Stef can't parallel park and her contact told her, "there's plenty of on-street parking."

OK, it's California so employment is a little different. She's got three days of work on what sounds 'pilotish.' It's four episodes of a reality show.

I know there's some TV involved, but probably a lot more fetching and driving and holding and helping. That's exactly where she should be, at the bottom feverishly climbing up.

It's a great start. We're very excited.

Filing taxes! Is there anything we do more painful or difficult? I hate it and I'm getting a refund. I'd be suicidal if I had to cut a check as well.

For the past few years we've been using TurboTax. I logged in, found my account and then realized there are probably online coupons to save money. I found one and reentered the site, but it was too late. TurboTax would only allow me to pay the full price.

Helaine asked if it was worth it to try and undo the $3? No. But this is like the cell companies giving long messages on voicemail so you'll use more minutes, right? TurboTax rakes in an extra $3 thousands... maybe hundreds of thousands of times. It adds up.

They also charge much more to do Connecticut's taxes than the federal forms. Let me restate: They also charge much more to do Connecticut's much shorter and simpler taxes than the federal forms! All the info and questions are already filled-in.

I guess their cost per filer is greater, but this is a little nuts--and by a little I mean a lot.

We only go through this once a year so it's tough to remember the specific details, but the user interface seems to be a little more sophisticated, more helpful each year. It's a mature app but they've found ways to improve.

Of course the real problem is I always feel I've forgotten something or screwed up something. My favor? Their favor? Who knows? Any mistake is money plus or minus.

As the process ends TurboTax invites you to use Mint. The choice is Helaine's as she's Secretary of our Treasury, but it might not be a bad idea.

My blog is my entertainment. I enjoy writing. I enjoy seeing how many people read what I write. Recently that number has been between 1,200 and 1,500 page views a day. Not too shabby, especially when you consider it's never been mentioned on-the-air during our newscasts! Today I'm at 9,000 11,621 and counting!

A confluence of circumstances conspired to raise my totals. The first says a lot about the power of Google.

I watched the Tom Brokaw documentary about Gander, Newfoundland on September 11, 2001 tonight (and wrote this about that remarkable doc). On a Saturday afternoon there aren't too many people writing abut what's on TV, but there were a lot of people interested in this documentary.

When I 'publish' an entry word is automatically sent to Google and its competitors. My pages are in Google's index in minutes. Usually on popular topics I'm drowned out by more powerful websites. Today, if you searched for "Brokaw, Gander" this site was number one or two (it changed during the day).

I experienced this once before when I wrote about Ashlee Simpson's lip sync debacle on Saturday Night Live. My East Coast entry was up early and pulled lots of traffic. As Sunday progressed and the story was picked up my search position kept falling--as you'd expect.

This Brokaw doc brought thousands of page reads for both the EST and PST showings!

The second traffic driver was an entry I wrote in 2004. A friend sent me a note about terrible storm damage in California. Attached was a photo of a deck chair on its side. It was pretty funny.

Today someone on Fark.com attached directly to that same picture with a link reading: "Tsunami damage photos begin trickling in, not for the weak of heart (geofffox.com)." I guess that was funny after Hawaii prepped for a tsunami that didn't come.

I only 'saw' that traffic by accident. Since Fark's link was directly to the photo it didn't register through my normal counting mechanisms. It was only because of my checking on the Brokaw doc that it was caught.

Linking directly to a photo without linking to my site's content is like running your house off my electricity! That upset me.

Luckily it's easy to command this server to redirect photo traffic to the original entry.

They still get a joke and now a little of my site too. I can live with that.

By Monday my traffic levels will return to normal.

On the other hand, links from other sites plus Twitter and Facebook mentions will help Google think more highly of me. This is how traffic is built.